· Private foundation
The Buckman Fun Filled Family Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k17 grants · $40k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $60k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CAL'S ANGELS | $22,500 |
| HOPE CHICAGO | $17,500 |
| LIV LIKE A UNICORN | $10,000 |
| LURIES CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $10,000 |
| WEISH4EVER | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| GUITARS OVER GUNS ORGANIZATION INC | $5,000 |
| CITY YEAR | $5,000 |
| HELP ONE NOW | $3,750 |
| MIND - REGISTERED LONDON ENGLAND CHARITY | $2,620 |
| URBAN INITIATIVES | $2,500 |
| CHICAGO ARCHITECTURAL CENTER | $2,500 |
| ANTHONY RIZZO FAMILY FOUNDATION | $1,600 |
| MARY DEROSA CANCER CHARITY NFP | $1,500 |
| COMPASSION INTERNATIONAL | $1,132 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Your human-services grants (FY18–25, $13k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 89% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
Which US states your grants reach
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +60% since the first grant, against +37% for the ones you funded once.
22 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down; 10 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 73% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $27k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- LLLIV LIKE A UNICORN2× · 2024–2025 · $24k · revenue +119%
Compassion International Incorporated9× · 2017–2025 · $15k · revenue +16%- GOGUITARS OVER GUNS ORGANIZATION INC4× · 2021–2025 · $13k · revenue +81%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2024 · $25k
- JUJEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGOgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue +32%
- PCPROJECT CURE CHICAGOone grant, 2022 · $10k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
Curesearch's mission is to fund & support targeted & innovative cancer research with measurable results, & to be the authoritative source of information & resources for all those affected by children's cancer. see schedule o for…
A better chicago is changing how chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth.
Provide pediatric and subspecialty surgical, research, and educational services.
The GI Research Foundation works to treat, prevent, and cure digestive diseases. In collaboration with the physicians and scientists at the University of Chicago Digestive Diseases Center, we fund innovative clinical and laboratory…
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy
The team at kipp chicago schools is guided by a simple, yet powerful mission: to create a network of excellent schools in chicago that teach our students the character and academic skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond, and to…
We value excellence and innovation in clinical and basic research, coordinated and comprehensive patient care, ongoing physician education, and evidence-based child advocacy. our goal is to provide leadership in endeavors that promote the…
Our mission: drive research, expand knowledge, and advance care for the nf community. our vision: end nf.
Children's advocates for change was organized to improve the lives of children in illinois by bringing about significant changes public policies and programs for children through research, policy analysis and advocacy, public education and…
The mission shall be to provide fundraising, advocacy, and advisory support for cancer research at the comprehensive cancer center at the university of chicago.
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
Thrive chicago's mission is to prepare chicago's youth for a vibrant future by aligning efforts and outcomes from cradle to career.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is St Baldrick's Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Kevin White Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 25 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
41 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 41 of the 75 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds HOPE CHICAGO INC ↗
- Who funds LIV LIKE A UNICORN ↗
- Who funds Compassion International Incorporated ↗
- Who funds GUITARS OVER GUNS ORGANIZATION INC ↗
- Who funds CITY YEAR INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN INITIATIVES INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF THE FOX RIVER VALLEY ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF NORTH CENTRAL ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds ANTHONY RIZZO FAMILY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL FOUNDATION OF ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds THE IMMOKALEE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BEAT THE STREETS CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds MARY DEROSA CHARITY NFP ↗
- Who funds HELP ONE NOW ↗
- Who funds BUNKER HILL CHARITIES ↗
- Who funds KESHET ↗
- Who funds CASA KANE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds HEALTHNET FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Boca School for Autism Inc ↗
- Who funds Childrens Oncology Services Inc ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: The Chicago Community Trust · Dunham Fund · Dunham Foundation · The Bersted Foundation · Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley · AbbVie Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc · Arthur J Gallagher Foundation · Fox Valley United Way · Northwestern Memorial HealthCare Group · United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Inc · Motorola Solutions Foundation
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization The Buckman Fun Filled Family Foundation funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- Guitars Over Guns Organization Inc — 1% of income from government
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.